March 26, 2014

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[Updated May 2016] The Bakery Chef continues to re-invent themselves. Apart from colourful and moist rainbow cakes, they have diversified to include toasts, soft serves and waffles.

Ah-huh, a Matcha Salted Egg Lava Toast. You may have seen this video from Insider making their rounds on Insider, and this humble cake café at Jalan Bukit Merah from Singapore has propelled to instant fame.

For $14.80, you get a choice of toast (charcoal, brioche or matcha), fillings (salted egg, Nutella or matcha) and a non-optional topup of chocolate, vanilla or matcha ice cream. (Used to be optional previously – blah.)

A toast with almost crispy layer and oozing centre has driven some instagrammers on a frenzy, but take note quality may be comprised as the small shop has the challenges handling the hype.

To be honest, the bread’s texture wasn’t fantastic, kind of doughy and tough to cut across. But the winning element was the filling of matcha sauce with an additional layer of saltiness.

In another visit, we wanted to add matcha ice cream, but was told “Sold out” when we were there just 10 minutes after opening. WHAT?

Anyway, the toast only starts selling at 12pm, and has repeated been sold out by 3pm – 4pm (or earlier). Perhaps go when the hype dies down.

In addition, with the light blue Sea Salt flavour mixed with Gula Melaka ($4.50, $1 extra for cotton candy), their soft serve looks and sounds suspiciously like Sydney’s Aqua S, also known for their blue-shaded eye-catching cone.

The texture is wonderful and milky. We preferred the blue side, as the the Gula Melaka needs to be more pronounced.

Flavours change every month. Previously, there was Strawberry Lime with Rockmelon, and this month it would be Bandung with Lychee. Appreciate their interesting mix, with the inclusion of localised flavours.

[Original Entry] Bukit Merah may jolly well join Tiong Bahru and Tyrwhitt Road as the next café hotspot, with three relatively new cafes opening about the same time – The Bakery Chef, Butter Scotch and Pan Delights.

The Bakery Chef may be a small 20-seater café, located at an inconspicuous location of Blk 161 Bt Merah Central, but its bakes easily beat what several other cafes offer. No surprise, as its chef (or chefs) all came from kitchens of various hotels.

Its open concept kitchen churns out quite a variety of cakes, pastries and macarons, with the most popular ones amongst customers being the Red Velvet Cheese Cake ($5.80), Chocolate Guanaja ($5.80) and Rainbow Cake (in limited quantities).

I will be frank. I am feeling kind of jaded (not the best word, but you get what I mean) of so many new cafes opening up in Singapore, with pretty good ambience but offering bad coffee or mediocre cakes or both.

The Bakery Chef, you changed my impression. Your cakes got standard. After a mouth of the Red Velvet, I thought “Wow, such moist sponge with yummy and fluffy cream cheese”. This is easily one of the best versions around in Singapore.

My other favourite was the tall Carrot Cake multi-layered with light cream cheese, being moist without being mushy, and not overly dense. Could be slightly more spiced, but I am not complaining.

Some of the other cakes I tried were both instagrammable beautiful and delicately delicious, but could have been less sweet, Perhaps I am more health-conscious now and tend to have a ‘sick feeling’ if I consume too many desserts. So go easy on the sugar.

Also when I arrived one busy afternoon, some customers did wait a good long time before they got their coffee. So avoid lunch hours if you want a seat and cosy time.

A humble café with such pretty cakes, what is there not to love? It is a tad ulu though, in the middle some HBD flats. At least it is opened everyday.